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rating prices, and to take from them their trade; they inevitably fall into loss and ruin; but you insist, that though your law has thus sunk their prices, and reduced their trade, it must have benefited them! You make a third to cut down wages so far, by a reduction of prices, that the labourer, by the most severe toil, cannot keep his family from want; you acknowledge that it has had the intended effect on his wages, but maintain that it must have been highly advantageous to him! Your arch-" empiric," Mr Huskisson, declared that his measures were to produce cheapness, and admit foreigners to a certain extent into your markets; he owns that they have produced cheapness by taking away profits and wages; he admits that the country is in great, suffering, and that the working classes are in great penury; yet he insists that his measures which he intended to produce, and which have on his own confessions produced, the losing prices and famine wages, have had no share in creating the distress, but, on the contrary, have been very advantageous !!!

In the whole history of "empiricism" this was never before equalled. The most impudent of medical quacks never yet ventured to declare that he increased health by poisoning people; and that when he destroyed them in this manner, he gave them life, and had no share in causing their death. This, however, is done by your political quacks; they declare, that by destroying property, profits, and bread, they increase prosperity; and that when by this they plunge the master into bankruptcy, and the workman into starvation, they do not cause distress, but, on the contrary, give wealth to the one, and abundance to the other! After deciding in this manner that laws which intentionally destroy property, profits, employments, and wages, cannot possibly produce distress-that the farmer and manufacturer must be benefited by losing prices and the annihilation of their capital, and the working classes must have their comforts increased by the loss of employment and the reduction of wages to famine ones-after doing this, you decide that prosperity must be soon restored without

any efforts on your part towards its restoration !

What, in reality, is your latter decision? You declare that the landowner must permanently reduce his rents-that he must lose for ever a large part of his income and property; and in the same breath you tell him that he will soon regain prosperity. You declare that the invasion of his markets by foreigners, and the inability of the labouring orders to consume a sufficiency of corn and animal food, shall permanently bind the farmer to inadequate prices; and in the same breath you tell him that he will soon regain prosperity. You declare that the shipowners and various manufacturers of different descriptions shall be permanently bound to losing prices and glut; and in the same breath you tell them that they will soon regain prosperity. You declare that the labouring classes shall be permanently bound to famine wages, and the inroads of foreigners on their employment; and in the same breath you tell them that they will soon regain prosperity. You insist that the elements of prosperity shall be for ever banishedthat your laws shall for ever confine land and its productions to distress value, producers to distress prices, and the labouring orders to distress wages; and at the same moment you insist that there will soon be a return of prosperity!

Now, in the name of common reason, why do you desire prosperity when you are so violently hostile to high prices? They are one and indivisible. To be prosperous, the landlord must have the value of his land preserved from injury, and obtain a good rent; the farmer must have prices which will enable him to pay such rent, give good wages and make good profits; the manufacturers must have prices which will enable them to buy raw produce at a reasonably high rate, give good wages, and make good profits; and the working classes must have good wages, and a sufficiency of employment. All this can only exist in high prices, and without it there can be no prosperity. Yet while you profess to sigh for the latter, you wage a war of extermination against the only things it can flow from!

And why are you so hostile to high

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prices? During the long period in which you had them, did they destroy your revenue, paralyze your power, and scourge your trade? Did they ruin and starve your population? You are mute, but we find an answer in the most magnificent period of English history. Oh, but you sagely shake your heads and exclaim They would affect contracts, banish gold, prevent competition with foreigners, and produce fits of suffer ing." And would all these, collectively, be as injurious as the present distress? They would comparatively be evils too trivial to be thought of. Yet to preserve the country from such evils, you fill it with loss, hunger, and misery-with all the elements of national ruin. To prevent sickness you take away life.

Your conduct is the more inexcusable, because the history of other countries, as well as of this, is open for your instruction. In proportion as foreign nations have had high prices, they have been rich and prosperous; in proportion as they have had low ones, they have been poor and wretched. What does the Russian or Prussian agriculturist reap from low prices, save permanent poverty and embarrassment? What does the continental labourer draw from low wages, save constant penury and privation? Nevertheless, you proclaim that this country must sink to their low prices and wages, to gain wealth and prosperity!

If you thus continue to delude yourselves, you will not long delude others. When you rail against the old restrictive system and bank-notes, people will remember that they did not overwhelm the empire with dreadful misery, as your free trade and gold have done. When you utter your unmeaning folly," that this country must not stand still while all is in motion around it;" they will think that "standing still" could not have yielded worse fruits than the "motion" you have given it has yielded. When you tell producers that you will enrich them by taking away their profits and property, or labourers, that you will increase their comforts by rendering it impossible for them to support themselves by the most severe toil, they will detect the true character of the " empiricism," and treat it accordingly.

At least be consistent; if you must vituperate high prices, vituperate prosperity equally. Proclaim that the latter is the bane of the public weal, and that it is your duty to banish it for ever. This will enable the community to judge correctly of your proceedings.

But you say, not only that there will be a return of prosperity in spite of what you have done, but that it will be hastened by your further labours in reducing profits and wages. Your present protections are but temporary ones, which you are anxious to abolish. Many of you declare that the extinction of the Corn Law would form a vast source of prosperity; let us now look at your doctrines on this matter.

Sir Henry Parnell, amidst other absurdities, has lately informed the world that" If the effect of the Corn Law is at least to raise the price of corn 5s. a-quarter, this advance on the quantity consumed, taken at fifty million quarters, creates a charge on the public of L.12,500,000, a-year." In this, you directly or indirectly concur: every reduction in the price of corn, you represent to be a benefit to the public at large.

Sir Henry thus admits that a reduction of 5s. in the quarter of corn, would take annually twelve millions and a half, from some part of the "public:"-from whom would the sum be taken? From the landowners only, is the ready reply of both him and yourselves. We deny it-we assert that men who give such a reply are, in respect of information, a disgrace to Parliament.

It is as certain, that a reduction in the price of corn must reduce husbandry wages, as it is that one in the prices of cottons and woollens must reduce the wages in the cotton and woollen trades. When such a reduction takes place, the farmer must diminish his costs of production; he cannot immediately operate on rent and taxes, therefore he employs less labour and reduces wages. No fact is better established by history than this-a fall in corn causes a greater reduction in husbandry wages, looking at quantity of employment as well as rate, than in rents. Such wages are now only half of what they were during the war, but rents have not fallen in proportion.'

What we and history say, will not, we are well aware, make any impression on you; but, however, it is asserted by the" quacks"--we use their own language-whom Sir Henry follows, and yourselves, that a fall in corn must cause a fall, not only in husbandry, but in all wages. It is your grand argument to the landowners, that the loss of rent produced by cheap corn, would be balanced by the cheapness of labour and commodities.

Every man acquainted with the subject, knows that to the farmer rents are really the highest when corn is the lowest; and that a fall in corn sweeps away a large portion of his capital.

Now, how stands the matter on your own confessions?

The twelve millions and a half would be as much taken from the husbandry labourers, saying nothing of the farmers, as from the landowners. The sum does not constitute a charge on the landowners, the farmers, the husbandry labourers, and the labouring classes generally. While it forms a gain to some of these, it causes no loss to the others.

This you distinctly admit and maintain.

Upon whom then does the sum fall as a charge? The master manufacturers, traders, and people who live on the interest of money. Do they consume all the corn grown in the country? Sir Henry Parnell himself will scarcely assert this in terms, although he does so in effect. They of course can only be affected by it as a charge in proportion to their consumption. They probably do not exceed one-tenth of the population, and perhaps they do not consume one-fifteenth of the corn, as Sir Henry's estimate includes that consumed by the farmers in seed and feed.

The 5s. per quarter, then, does not form a charge on the "public," if we are to understand by the term, the vast majority of the population; and it only forms one on the trifling minority of the "public" to the amount of about L.830,000. This is the fact according to your own doctrines.

If, then, you take this sum from the price of corn, you take it from a large part of the " public," to give it to a small one; you transfer the wages of the husbandry labourer to the income

of the comparatively wealthy. This is not all. You assert that the reduction must reduce general wages and prices: if this be true, it follows that the labourers employed by the export trade really charge the money they pay for corn on foreigners, and of course the latter would the reap gain on the corn consumed by them. The fact then is this: you take a large sum from one part of the "public," and only give à portion of it to the other; the rest you give to foreigners: in consequence, you subject the "public" as a whole to loss,

On your own doctrines, this is incontrovertible.

Sir H. Parnell on this matter in reality asserts, 1. The dearer corn is, the greater is the dead loss sustained by the farmers on all they sow, give to their cattle, and consume in their houses, although, as they produce this corn themselves, variations in its market value cannot possibly make any difference to them. 2. This dead loss cannot be in any degree counterpoised to them by the additional profit they gain on the corn they sell. 3. The dearer corn is, the greater is the dead loss sustained by the landowners on all they consume. 4. This dead loss cannot be in any degree made up to them by the rents which dear corn gives them. 5. As this dead loss to both rises with the price of corn, it follows that it is the least when corn is the cheapest; of course the profits and rents of farmers and landowners must be at the maximum when corn is not sold but given away. 6. The wages and employment of husbandry and other labourers cannot be in the least varied by variations in the price of corn. He either asserts all this, or he asserts that the landowners, farmers, and husbandry and other labourers, do not consume a grain of corn; but that the whole produced in the country, seed included, is consumed by the rest of the population. His dogma amounts to the one or the other.

Yet this Sir Henry is one of your leaders; he was the chairman of your Finance Committee, he writes books on Currency and Political Economy, and he despises, with all the pomp of infallibility, those who dissent from him. Here is one reason why his errors should be severely dealt with, and we will cite another; he puts

forth these monstrous errors after they have been again and again refuted.

Why do you sanction the doctrine that variations in the price of corn fall solely on rents? Mere opinion respecting it is out of the question, because it has been abundantly tested by experiment. You have had long periods of dear, and of cheap corn; what have they established? The farmers and husbandry labourers profited more than the landowners from the high price, and they suffered more from the low one. The nature of things proves that this must always be the case-that at all times the low price of corn must injure the husbandry labourers even more than the landowners. Why then do you, in the teeth of experience and reason, sanction what is alike injurious in practice and propagation?

It is because we are the enemies of falsehood and delusion, that we protest against your conduct on this

matter.

You countenance the assertions that the Corn Law exists for the benefit of the Aristocracy only-that the great landowners are the only people who profit from high prices. Are they true or false? The great land owners generally take low rents, which they vary but little, and in consequence variations of price affect them much less than their tenants; they are comparatively but little benefited by the corn law; the advan tages yielded by the latter in respect of rent, are principally reaped by the middling and small landowners. Of this you cannot be ignorant.

You thus, under the pretence of attacking the Aristocracy, attack the best part of the Democracy; because a law happens to benefit a rich Peer, it must be destroyed, though its destruction will ruin multitudes of people of middling and small property. Put the Aristocracy wholly out of sight, and you will still have a body of landowners who rank amidst the most virtuous and valuable of your population, and who far surpass in numbers and property your cotton and woollen manufacturers combined.

The land of these landowners has been, in a large degree, bought by them or their ancestors in the last thirty years; therefore it does not

yield them adequate interest on the capital vested in it; of course, if you take away the corn law, you, to a great extent, take their just property. Now, what are the pleas on which you seek to plunder them?

You and your "empirics" regularly declare, that labour must fall with corn; you represent that your great object in bringing down corn, is to bring down wages; and you assure the landowner, that if his rents fall, wages and commodities will fall equally. On your own declarations, therefore, the robbery of these landowners would not yield the least gain to the working classes; it would only, in general, benefit the master manufacturers and traders, the people whose income arises from the interest of money, and foreigners.

Would the robbery raise the rate of profit of manufacturers and traders ? You say, No! for you assert that prices would fall with wages. According to your own doctrines, it could only benefit them a little in their house-keeping expenses.

But you say the cheapness would increase the export trade. Where is your evidence? Some foreign nations prohibit your goods, and others will only receive them under protecting duties, which they raise as you reduce your prices. In several of them, the duties on your manufactures would have been at this moment much lighter than they are, if your prices had been kept up; the reduction, therefore, has merely raised their revenues. You, therefore, grind your landowners and labourers to powder, not to increase your exports, but to tax them for the benefit of foreigners; you compel them to pay the taxes of America and some other states, as well as their own.

This refers to your articles of export; with regard to other articles, the abolition of the Corn Law could not enable you to export them.

Thus, you would plunge half your population into the abyss of confisca tion and penury, to increase your exports to foreign nations, not only when you have no evidence that it would have such effect, but in the teeth of conclusive evidence that it could not. You raise the cry over the ruin and famine which your cheapness creates,-"Oh, it will enlarge the export trade!" but you nei

ther point out the place, nor calculate the quantity; you do not conde scend to shew where the prohibition will be abolished, or the protecting duty will not be raised. Your cry is a crazy assertion branded as false by every species of evidence. Could any thing be more unstatesmanlike, could any thing be more criminal, than this wholesale destruction of property and bread, not only when you have no proof that it will accomplish what you desire, but when you are surrounded by proof that it is impossible for it to do so?

This, then, is really the question touching the Corn Law,-Shall the landowners be robbed of both income and property, merely that the master manufacturers, tradesmen, and certain other people of property, may have their expenses of living somewhat reduced, and foreign nations may be enabled to buy goods cheaper of, and draw more taxes from, this country? This is really the question; on your own shewing, the labouring classes have nothing to do with it.

Your "empirics" tell the working orders that they will profit prodigiously from cheap bread; and in the same breath they tell the landowners, that wages must fall in the same degree with bread. They thus confess. that the labourer's command over bread would not be in the least increased in regard to wages. But they assert, a vast additional quantity of manufactures would be exported in payment for foreign corn. Putting out of sight the preventatives to this we have named, these same "empirics" maintain, that as many agricultural labourers would be thrown out of employment by the import of the foreign corn, as would be required for fabricating the additional manufactures. On their own doctrines, therefore, the working orders could not be benefited in wages, or quantity of employment, or any thing.

You know that these wretched errors have fatal effect on the public mind-that they array the lower against the upper classes, and generate every feeling requisite for the production of public ruin; yet you countenance them. We spare reproach, but we separate ourselves from the shame and iniquity.

We should not trouble ourselves with a man of Mr Courtenay's cali

bre, looking at him apart from his office: the opinions of an individual who has bit the dust at every encounter with petty lawmaking, and who completely broke down under such a matter as legislating for benefit societies, can be rendered worthy of remark by his office alone. Incredible as it may appear, such a personage is actually the Vice President of the Board of Trade, and therefore may be presumed to utter the sentiments of the Ministry: on this ground we will offer some observations on the speech he delivered on Mr Davenport's motion.

Mr Courtenay with marvellous candour owns that when he received his office, his mind was free as "a sheet of blank paper" from all impressions touching the principles of Free Trade. We fully believe him, so far as concerns knowledge. Here is a public functionary who avows that when he obtained a very important office, he was utterly disqualified for filling it he was totally destitute of the information required for the discharge of its duties. But he declares he has since duly examined these principles, and has found them to be perfectly true. Could any thing be more ludicrous than for such a man to pretend to examine, and above all to understand them?

Mr Courtenay says, "Procuring the articles we might want where we could get them at the cheapest rates, be it domestic or foreign," is the "sound principle of Free Trade," and the principle on which Government is "determined to act."

This most ignorant person thus can see no difference between the articles which this country produces, and those which it does not produce-between cotton, sugar, and indigo, on the one hand, and corn, cattle, silks, and linens on the other. In reality he maintains, that if this country could be undersold in every thing, it ought to abandon production altogether!

He lauds the cheapness, because by its "reaction" it increases exports. How is the cheapness produced? By destroying capital and bread-by cursing the labouring classes with famine. Yet in his eyes, cheapness produced in this manner is a national benefit. Overwhelm your whole population with loss and want, and this will be highly advantageous to it,

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